Reid was commissioned in the
Corps of Royal Engineers,
Board of Ordnance, as no. 419, with the rank of second lieutenant on 10 February 1809, promoted first lieutenant on 23 April 1810, whereupon he joined
Wellington's army at
Lisbon. From 1810 to 1814 he served with the British army in the
Peninsular War. He returned to England in 1814 and was promoted second captain on 20 December. In 1815 he served in the latter stages of the
Anglo-American War including participating in
Sir Edward Pakenham's unsuccessful attack on New Orleans. In 1816 he returned to Woolwich to become adjutant of the
Royal Sappers and Miners and in the same year he accompanied the expedition against
Algiers under
Lord Exmouth. From 1819 to 1824 he was on half pay. Between 1824 and 1827 Reid served with the
Ordnance Survey in Ireland then without employment until on 28 January 1829 he was promoted regimental first captain and sent to
Exeter to quell the reform riots. Reid was in the
Leeward Islands in 1831 to direct the task of reconstruction after the
Great Barbados hurricane and in Barbados saw at firsthand the destructive power of storms. He became interested in hurricanes, which were at the time a matter of intense scientific controversy. During his two-and-a-half-year stay he became absorbed in trying to understand the nature of
North Atlantic hurricanes, which led to a lifelong study of tropical storms. In 1835 Reid commanded a brigade in the
British Legion raised by the
Queen Regent of Spain. In 1837 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel and was stationed from then until 1839 in Portsmouth. In England, Reid presented scientific ideas he had developed with
William Redfield studying storm data before the
British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1838 to great acclaim. In the same year Reid published his "An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms by Means of Facts". For this he was appointed
Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1838 and was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1839. Reid published a second book in 1849, "Progress of the Development of the Law of Storms", and in that year became vice-president of the Royal Society. He was promoted colonel on 11 November 1851 and major-general 30 May 1856. File:Reid-1.jpg|Reid's
An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms by Means of Facts (1846) File:Reid-3.jpg|Title page to
An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms by Means of Facts (1846) File:Reid-7.jpg|First page to
An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms by Means of Facts (1846) File:Reid-2.jpg|Figure from
An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms by Means of Facts (1846) ==Administrator==